The Theatre: Stock Woe

Stock companies are often pitiful, struggling organizations. Their
managers bear incalculable woes. One of these was voiced last week by
George J. Houtain, counsel for the Theatrical Stock Managers
Association. Declaring in a letter to the American Federation of
Musicians that prohibitive union wages and regulations had made music
scarce in stock productions, he added: "If a phonograph needed
operating behind scenes, you wouldn't allow the manager or one of the
company to turn it on or off. . . . It had to be done by a union musician
at a full week's wage, and he wasn't allowed to play...